Local versus organic: a turn in consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay

Demand for local food in the United States has significantly increased over the last decade. In an attempt to understand the drivers of this demand and how they have changed over time, we investigate the literature on organic and local foods over the last few decades. We focus our review on studies that allow comparison of characteristics now associated with both local and organic food. We summarize the major findings of these studies and their implications for understanding drivers of local food demand. Prior to the late 1990s, most studies failed to consider factors now associated with local food, and the few that included these factors found very little support for them. In many cases, the lines between local and organic were blurred. Coincident with the development of federal organic food standards, studies began to find comparatively more support for local food as distinct and separate from organic food. Our review uncovers a distinct turn in the demand for local and organic food. Before the federal organic standards, organic food was linked to small farms, animal welfare, deep sustainability, community support, and many other factors that are not associated with most organic foods today. Based on our review, we argue that demand for local food arose largely in response to corporate cooptation of the organic food market and the arrival of “organic lite.” This important shift in consumer preferences away from organic and toward local food has broad implications for the environment and society. If these patterns of consumer preferences prove to be sustainable, producers, activists, and others should be aware of the implications that these trends have for the food system at large

Do emotional faces capture attention, and does this depend on awareness? Evidence from the visual probe paradigm

The visual probe (VP) paradigm provides evidence that emotional stimuli attract attention. Such effects have been reported even when stimuli are presented outside of awareness. These findings have shaped the idea that humans possess a processing pathway that detects evolutionarily significant signals independently of awareness. Here, we addressed 2 unresolved questions: First, if emotional stimuli attract attention, is this driven by their affective content, or by low-level image properties (e.g., luminance contrast)? Second, does attentional capture occur under conditions of genuine unawareness? We found that observers preferentially allocated attention to emotional faces under aware viewing conditions. However, this effect was best explained by low-level stimulus properties, rather than emotional content. When stimuli were presented outside of awareness (via continuous flash suppression or masking), we found no evidence that attention was directed toward emotional face stimuli. Finally, observer's awareness of the stimuli (assessed by d') predicted attentional cuing. Our data challenge existing literature: First, we cast doubt on the notion of preferential attention to emotional stimuli in the absence of awareness. Second, we question whether effects revealed by the VP paradigm genuinely reflect emotion-sensitive processes, instead suggesting they can be more parsimoniously explained by low-level variability between stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Discriminating between a Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background and Instrument Noise

The detection of a stochastic background of gravitational waves could significantly impact our understanding of the physical processes that shaped the early Universe. The challenge lies in separating the cosmological signal from other stochastic processes such as instrument noise and astrophysical foregrounds. One approach is to build two or more detectors and cross correlate their output, thereby enhancing the common gravitational wave signal relative to the uncorrelated instrument noise. When only one detector is available, as will likely be the case with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), alternative analysis techniques must be developed. Here we show that models of the noise and signal transfer functions can be used to tease apart the gravitational and instrument noise contributions. We discuss the role of gravitational wave insensitive "null channels" formed from particular combinations of the time delay interferometry, and derive a new combination that maintains this insensitivity for unequal arm length detectors. We show that, in the absence of astrophysical foregrounds, LISA could detect signals with energy densities as low as $\Omega_{\rm gw} = 6 \times 10^{-13}$ with just one month of data. We describe an end-to-end Bayesian analysis pipeline that is able to search for, characterize and assign confidence levels for the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using simulated data from the third round of Mock LISA Data Challenges.Comment: 10 Pages, 10 Figure

Theoretical investigation of transgastric and intraductal approaches for ultrasound-based thermal therapy of the pancreas.

BackgroundThe goal of this study was to theoretically investigate the feasibility of intraductal and transgastric approaches to ultrasound-based thermal therapy of pancreatic tumors, and to evaluate possible treatment strategies.MethodsThis study considered ultrasound applicators with 1.2 mm outer diameter tubular transducers, which are inserted into the tissue to be treated by an endoscopic approach, either via insertion through the gastric wall (transgastric) or within the pancreatic duct lumen (intraductal). 8 patient-specific, 3D, transient, biothermal and acoustic finite element models were generated to model hyperthermia (n = 2) and ablation (n = 6), using sectored (210°-270°, n = 4) and 360° (n = 4) transducers for treatment of 3.3-17.0 cm3 tumors in the head (n = 5), body (n = 2), and tail (n = 1) of the pancreas. A parametric study was performed to determine appropriate treatment parameters as a function of tissue attenuation, blood perfusion rates, and distance to sensitive anatomy.ResultsParametric studies indicated that pancreatic tumors up to 2.5 or 2.7 cm diameter can be ablated within 10 min with the transgastric and intraductal approaches, respectively. Patient-specific simulations demonstrated that 67.1-83.3% of the volumes of four sample 3.3-11.4 cm3 tumors could be ablated within 3-10 min using transgastric or intraductal approaches. 55.3-60.0% of the volume of a large 17.0 cm3 tumor could be ablated using multiple applicator positions within 20-30 min with either transgastric or intraductal approaches. 89.9-94.7% of the volume of two 4.4-11.4 cm3 tumors could be treated with intraductal hyperthermia. Sectored applicators are effective in directing acoustic output away from and preserving sensitive structures. When acoustic energy is directed towards sensitive structures, applicators should be placed at least 13.9-14.8 mm from major vessels like the aorta, 9.4-12.0 mm from other vessels, depending on the vessel size and flow rate, and 14 mm from the duodenum.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated the feasibility of generating shaped or conformal ablative or hyperthermic temperature distributions within pancreatic tumors using transgastric or intraductal ultrasound

PEACH PRICES IN CALIFORNIA IN THE PRESENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN THE AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDE INDUSTRY

The potentially adverse effects of pesticides in wide use are causing concern to grow in the agricultural community. Minimizing the risks to human health and the environment created by agricultural pesticides has become a very important issue. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a high priority on registering safer pesticides. According to the EPA, more than 1 billion pounds of active pesticide ingredients are used in the United States each year. Americans are exposed to pesticides every day through food consumption, cleaning products, and home and work environments. The agricultural pesticide industry has experienced an influx of changes during the past decade. Two of the primary changes affecting the pesticide industry are the introduction of new technology and EPA regulatory changes. On the regulatory front, the EPA requires manufacturers to register and test pesticides before they appear on the market. By 2006, the EPA will review old pesticides to ensure that they meet new safety requirements. These regulatory initiatives have contributed to the industry drive to develop safer and more "environmentally friendly" products for use in agricultural pest control. Technological changes consist of the introduction of new pesticides that are considered to be safer for both humans and the environment. As new technologies and regulatory initiatives are undertaken to ensure an improvement in both the safety of human health and the environment, one must consider how these changes may affect consumers. Specifically, an analysis should be conducted to determine whether or not the technological and regulatory changes have an effect on consumer prices. The recent developments in the agricultural pesticide industry provide several reasons to believe structural change has been occurring in economic relationships that determine peach prices in California. Therefore, we use a vector autoregressive (VAR) model to forecast peach prices by allowing parameters to vary with time. VAR models differ from standard econometric analyses of structural relationships in that they do not apply the usual exclusion restrictions to specify a priori which variables appear in which equations. Instead, a set of distributed lag equations is used to model each variable as a function of other variables in the structural system (Bessler, 1984). The objective of this paper is to forecast peach prices and evaluate dynamic relationships in the peach industry in the presence of technological and regulatory change. A VAR model that explicitly recognizes structural change will be used to forecast peach prices in California. Changes in dynamic relationships between peach prices and relevant economic variables will be considered.Demand and Price Analysis,

Political theory and history: The case of anarchism

This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent theoretical discussions of anarchism, postanarchism, and argues that this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through an examination of late 19th-century anarchist political thought—as represented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin—we demonstrate the extent to which postanarchism has tended to oversimplify and misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going forward should begin with a fresh appraisal of the actual content of anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political, social, and cultural history